Tuesday, 19 June 2012

The Round-up w/e 17/06/2012

Without pausing for breath, let’s dispense with
the preamble and dive straight into this week’s steaming pile of links.

Behavioural tracking and the erosion of personal
privacy has increased to a point that worries many people. If you want to see a
clear extirpation of the problem, then take a look atthis TED talk by Gary Kovacs called Tracking the
Trackers." Give it a try yourself. Here’s thelinkto the Firefox extension Collusion mentioned
in the video.

Come join the slowest-growing religion in the
world –Dudeism. The Church of the Latter-Day Dude is a religion inspired by The
Big Lebowski, Taoism and more. Free ordination as a minister! If only I could get my ass off this sofa maaan…

Deborah Hyde (aka Jourdemayne)
came to visit us in March with a fascinating talk on The Folklore of Fear.
Let’s catch up with the latest accounts of belief in the undead with this new
article High
Stakes. The content is fairly close to Deborah’s Sitp talk if you missed
it.

Reminiscent of a Viz cartoon strip - Mormons and their sacred
underpants: What
happens when they whip them off? It’s worth clicking through to the
original article for a serious story about a loss of faith.

Love your
smartphone but miss the feel of a real keyboard? Now you can have boththanks to a new tactile touchscreen that morphs to
create physical buttons. Looks like a parallel arrangement of sunburn blisters
from where I’m sitting.

Fearing that the ghosts of the departed would
come to torment them, residents of a suburb of Lagos where the Dana airliner
crashed in June, have reacted negatively to proposals for the mass burial of
unidentified victims in the area.

Here’s some sand back in your face beach
bully: New research from scientists at McMaster University reveals
exercise-related testosterone and growth hormone do not play an influential role in building muscle after weightlifting, despite
conventional wisdom suggesting otherwise.

Scientists are embarking on a missionto
capture a 3D imageof every ant species known to science. Some additional ants in the scans can be found here
– a strange mix of Micro CT with twangy C & W accompaniment.

Finally, neither science nor skepticism but may cause some neurological
problems if watched more than once; here’s William Shatner’s unique version of Bohemian Rhapsody from his new album Seeking
Major Tom. It comes with the skeptical health warning due to it being pure,
erm, Shat…

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